Rum & Coke

Oscar Corral ‘92 | Contributing Writer
(This article originally appeared in the Belen Jesuit Magazine, summer 2018 edition.)
In the mid 1980s, after Belen moved from its humble location on Calle Ocho to its existing campus in west Miami-Dade, there were months when the school did not have enough money to pay its teachers, who at times had to forego paychecks to keep the school from going insolvent.
 
These were the kinds of growing pains experienced as the school expanded its ambitions and student body, and they were dire.
 
“Those were extremely difficult years. We didn’t have money to pay our monthly bills,” said Jesuit Father Marcelino García, president Emeritus of Belen Jesuit.
 
In those desperate times, school administrators turned to rum and coke. But it wasn’t Cuba libres that numbed their woes. It was support from the businessmen who headed two of the most iconic brands: Coca-Cola and Bacardi.
 
Throughout Belen’s early history in Miami, two of the champions of the school who helped it survive and thrive just happened to be from those two companies. Jorge Bosch, a former president of Bacardi, and Roberto Goizueta, former chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, each played integral roles in shaping the Belen we know today.
 
Belen President Jesuit Father Guillermo García-Tuñón said Bosch and Goizueta set a standard early on for supporting Belen.
 
“What an interesting coincidence that it happens to be Bacardi and Coca-Cola who made possible the generous philanthropic endeavors of individuals like Bosch and Goizueta,” said Father García-Tuñón.
 
Goizueta attended Belen in Cuba and graduated from high school in 1949. He worked for Coca-Cola since 1954, when he answered an anonymous help-wanted ad for a chemical engineer in Havana.
 
His son, Roberto S. Goizueta, said in a recent interview that Belen played a pivotal role in shaping his father’s character and world-view. Goizueta remains one of America’s most celebrated CEOs, having taken The Coca-Cola Company from a valuation of $4.3 billion in 1981 to $152 billion by the time of his death in 1997.
 
“I don’t think it’s possible to appreciate how much he contributed to the world and to appreciate his success without also appreciating the role that Belen played in that,” said Goizueta.
 
Goizueta, his family foundation and the Coca-Cola Foundation have donated generously to Belen over the years, including a $2 million donation for construction of the Roberto Goizueta Athletic Center in the late 1990s. “He wanted to do as much as he could for Belen,” said his son.
 
“You couldn’t spend much time talking with dad without having Belen come up at some point in the conversation,” said Goizueta with a chuckle.
 
Goizueta’s generosity to Belen opened the doors for other wealthy alumni and supporters to feel comfortable making large donations to the school, said Fr. Marcelino.
 
“It gave confidence to the Latin millionaire, as well as American companies, to donate to Belen,” said Father García. “This type of donor has discovered that to donate to Belen is to invest.”
 
In 1992, Goizueta established The Goizueta Foundation to provide financial assistance to educational and charitable institutions. His widow, Olga Casteleiro de Goizueta, who took leadership of the foundation after Goizueta’s death in 1997, died in 2015.
 
In addition to their son Roberto, a prominent theologian at Boston College, the Goizuetas are survived by their daughter, Olga Goizueta Rawls, chair and CEO of The Goizueta Foundation, and son Javier C. Goizueta, a retired Coca-Cola executive. A fourth child of theirs, Carlos Alberto, died as a child of leukemia. Roberto and Olga are also survived by four grandsons and five granddaughters.
 
Like the rum and coke that blend to create a unique cocktail, Goizueta and Bosch represented two very different kinds of support for Belen. In Goizueta, the school had an alumnus and supporter who had never met most of Belen’s administrators and lived in Atlanta, far removed from Belen’s day to day operations.
 
Bosch, on the other hand, served on Belen’s Board of Advisors for 33 years, most of those as chairman. He was a valuable advisor to Father García and others at Belen.
In a recent interview, Bosch, 93, said he supports Belen because he believes in the Jesuit mission.
 
“The Jesuits are very important in my spiritual life,” said Bosch. “They were all my friends. I admired them very much for the job they were doing. They needed help and I was going to give it to them.”
 
Bosch, the son of Bacardi president, Jose “Pepin” Bosch, graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire and received a chemical engineering degree from Yale University. He spent 20 years as a master brewer, launching Bacardi’s famous beer, Hatuey and cornering the Cuban beer market. He was trained as a master brewer at the Schwartz School of Brewing.
 
To this day. Bosch enjoys drinking beer, especially on Saturdays when he attends horse races at Gulf Stream Park in Hallandale. He usually drinks Miller Light or Budweiser, but enjoys Honey Blonde Ale, a craft beer, when he visits Yardhouse Restaurant in Hallandale. “I love beer,” said Bosch.
 
The early turning point in Bosch’s spiritual life came when he met his wife, Yvelise Molina, in 1950. That’s when his loyalty and commitment to the Jesuit mission began.
“She was very religious. My family was not. She took me to church every Sunday,” said Bosch. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the confusing maze of exile twisted relationships across time and distance. Belen in Cuba was shut down in 1961. A few months later the school reopened in Miami at Gesú School on the third floor in downtown. Bosch remembers those early Belen years.
 
“I got a call from my father saying that the Jesuits wanted to buy a house on Southwest Eighth Street, Calle Ocho and that they needed some money,” recalled Bosch. “He asked me to please send them a donation from the company - we did.”
 
Father García-Tuñon said Bosch helped Belen make the transition from a “mom and pop bodega-style operation” to a more professional, American-style institution.
 
“It had a lot to do with Bosch’s work with the board, and his expertise at Bacardi dealing with banks and refinancing of the Belen bonds and the loans,” said Father García-Tuñon. “The very solid financial state that Belen finds itself in right now had a lot to do with Bosch.”
 
“Time and time again, Bosch stepped up to help Belen in times of need, and to strengthen it financially,” said Father García.

“It’s about influencing your community,” said Father García, in explaining Bosch’s help to Belen over the years. “How are you going to transform the world and leave it a little better than how you found it? These are the politics behind the Jesuit philosophy.”
 
Bosch said it’s important for Belen alumni and supporters to carry on the tradition of supporting the school. He gives the example of a Belen alumnus who worked at Morgan Stanley, and helped the school get its investments out of the failed Lehman Brothers investment bank and through the financial crisis a decade ago.
 
He said Belen alumni often don’t fully appreciate the impact Belen’s education had on their lives until they are older.
 
“In time, as you go through the test of life, the spiritual education that they received is important,” said Bosch. “And it’s going to be important for them in the development of their family and their children.”
 
Bosch’s wife, Yvelise, died eight years ago. The couple had two sons, Jorge Alejandro, who died of swine flu, said Bosch, and Jose Ignacio. Bosch retired from Bacardi in the 1970s, and went on to work in real estate investment and financial work. He remains a devoted Belen supporter.
 
Father García-Tuñón, who is Belen’s first president to have graduated from the school in Miami, said he hopes the examples set by Goizueta and Bosch are an inspiration to younger generations.
 
As a fourth-generation Belen alumnus, Father García-Tuñón said he feels both the pressure and the pride to take Belen into the future.
 
“It’s my generation now that is at the point where they should be motivated to give back to their school,” said Father García-Tuñón. “I take over an institution that has a proven track record academically, spiritually, morally, and that has a very, very bright future.”
 
Oscar Corral, ‘92, is an Emmy-award winning journalist and documentary filmmaker and CEO of Explica Media
 
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BELEN JESUIT PREPARATORY SCHOOL
500 SW 127th Avenue, Miami, FL 33184
phone: 305.223.8600 | fax: 305.227.2565 | email: webmaster@belenjesuit.org
Belen Jesuit Preparatory School was founded in 1854 in Havana, Cuba by Queen Isabel II of Spain.  The task of educating students was assigned to the priests and brothers of the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), whose teaching tradition is synonymous with academic excellence and spiritual discipline.  In 1961, the new political regime of Cuba confiscated the School property and expelled the Jesuit faculty.  The School was re-established in Miami the same year, and over the next decade, continued to grow.  Today, Belen Jesuit sits on a 30-acre site in western Dade County, only minutes away from downtown Miami.